Programmable telephones having a variety of features are well known. However, these telephones typically require complex arrays of control and keypad buttons to be dedicated to particular features. These telephones are typically require complex and lengthy user programming operations.
A recent improvement was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,040, entitled "Telephone Feature Assignment Circuit." That patent was issued on June 5, 1984 to L. W. Smith and A. L. Wolf. However, the improvement disclosed therein was limited to entry of numerical data.
The present invention discloses a novel data entry and display control circuit which allows pushbuttons to be programmed for various telephone features in response to alphanumeric data entry from a standard telephone keypad. This novel invention also discloses an arrangement for controlling both the positioning of the cursor on a display screen, and other display functions, from a standard telephone keypad.